Command

The most important language pattern in NLP is from the Miltonmodel the Embedded Command. People nowadays don’t like to be commanded. Nevertheless, the strongest form of suggestion is the command. People unconsciously still want to be led. You embed a command by putting at least one word in front of it. That way you overcome people’s dislike of being commanded while at the same time satisfy their desire to be led.

With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of logical argument. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, argumentative conversation was repudiated in good society: it was considered bad manners, compromising. The young were warned against it. Furthermore, any presentation of one’s motives was distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not have to explain themselves so openly. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the logician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?